Only the third box is checked. Clarke carefully ticks the others and scans her cuff, then hands the holoscreen back to the marshal before looking to Sara. “Are you finally going to tell me what we’re doing today?”
Sara looks around furtively as they walk toward the front of the paddock. “You and Julian are meeting with the lower circuit team who wants to supply the ships for the post-season one-on-one.”
Clarke leans close. “Why are we whispering?”
“Because it’s still a secret, and—”
“Clarke! Sara!”
They turn at the sound of their shouted names to see Yves walking quickly toward them. When he catches up, he says, quietly, “We’re canceling today’s session with Julian.”
Sara immediately pulls up a holoscreen, frowning. “No, that’s—since when? We need this for the—”
Clarke lets Sara argue with Yves, but has personally skipped confusion and gone straight to disappointed resignation. She saw this coming. Contract negotiations are off to a bad start. Yves is holding the post-season race over Clarke’s head; she won’t be able to participate without a team’s support. She signs, or she loses this. Alternately, he truly does just want Clarke to walk away and doesn’t want Elemental to waste any more resources on an event that isn’t going to happen.
What a prick.
“It’s fine,” Clarke says loudly, drawing a surprised look from Sara and a suspicious one from Yves that she isn’t protesting. She doesn’t bother explaining, instead taking a second to send Julian a quick message letting him know she won’t be coming. As badly as she wants to race him on equal terms, this isn’t a battle she can pick. “What’s the new plan?”
—
The new planis more of the old plan, Yves impressing upon Clarke that she needs to perform well this weekend. Theor elseis heavily implied. The machinery hasn’t improved, and team strategy still isn’t clear, but sure, Clarke will just magically have a better result here.
HerAre you freaking kidding me?attitude breaks through at a few points. She can’t help it. She’s here, in Yves’s tiny office, getting berated, instead of with Julian talking about their race. Naomi told Clarke back in the middle of the season that her image was starting to skew bitter and spiteful? Well, Clarke’s certainly feeling it now.
Julian calls when she’s in her hotel room, getting ready for team dinner. “Elemental pulled the plug?”
Clarke casts the video to feed to the mirror and continues trying to get the ends of her hair to lie flat. “Yeah. Sorry.”
“It’s not your fault.” He’s in a hotel room, too, on the other side of the city. He’s got a cap in his hands, the ubiquitous kind everyone wears on race weekends, but it’s a deep purple she knows but can’t place, not Chronicle green. “I just wish I’d read your message before I went into the meeting. It would’ve been easier to give it up if I hadn’t known what ships we were supposed to use.”
He turns the hat around, showing Clarke the logo. She recognizes it immediately and has to sit down on the counter. “Eclipsis.”
Julian nods, the same blend of grief and love on his face that Clarke’s feeling. “Yeah. The team Connor was flying for when he died.”
Memories clamor to the front of Clarke’s mind. Connor’s easy way of diffusing tension, his fierce affection for his younger sisters, how he was forever losing track of his belongings. The hug he’d given Clarke the last time she saw him, tight and quick as their circuits crossed paths between races.
Be careful out there,she’d said, looking up at the darkening sky with a frown.Visibility’s about to go to shit.
You and Julian were made for each other,he’d complained, and shown her the message Julian had sent him just a moment earlier with the same warning.
He’s watching?Clarke had asked.
Of course he is,Connor had said confidently.We’re his favorite people, even when you guys are fighting.
Tears threaten. Clarke presses her fingers into the corners of her eyes, holding them at bay. “He would’ve really liked that. I would’ve, too.”
Julian sets the hat aside with careful hands. “Now that I’ve had a few hours to think about it, yeah. I didn’t exactly react well in the moment, though.”
Clarke goes still. “PK didn’t tell you before you walked into the room? That’sawful, Julian.”
“He thought I knew.” Julian’s voice and face are flat, his emotions controlled. “He talked to Val, and Val told him she’d talked to me, and that I said you and me would both be fine using Eclipsis hardware.”
Clarke can’t imagine what that must’ve felt like for him, shaking hands with the team that built the ship Connor died in with no warning. She wishes she could hug him. “And that didn’t happen?”
“It did not. I’m going to talk to Val about it, see where the miscommunication happened.”
“That’s a big miscommunication.”
